Authors: Patricia Wallace
Thirty-Two
Since he’d missed his walk that morning, Mr. Rafferty decided to take one after dinner. His digestion wasn’t what it used to be, and maybe a nice long stroll would settle his stomach.
Actually, he’d felt a mite sour all day, and it probably was unfair to blame it on the manicotti he’d had for supper, even though every time he put his fork to it, he imagined that beneath the tomato sauce he was cutting into short lengths of intestines which were filled with plump, wriggling maggots.
“No fool like an old fool,” he said to himself as he maneuvered down the front porch steps. The path from his door to the sidewalk was strewn with the white rock from around the rose bushes, and he frowned. “Damn dogs.”
He’d been joking the other night when he’d suggested to Georgia Baker that the dogs be shot—one of the privileges of age was being able to make outrageous statements without being challenged—but now he wasn’t so sure.
They all might be better off if someone rounded up the beasts.
When the county Animal Control officers had come this afternoon to remove the dead dog’s body, the spine had broken as they were lifting it up, and with a sound reminiscent of corn being husked, the carcass had broken in two.
Disgusting, he thought. It was enough to give anyone nightmares.
The night was still ahead, but coming closer. The sun was down and twilight was fading.
Rafferty turned left when he reached the sidewalk, and saw Jill Baker and another girl standing at the edge of the Baker lawn, looking at something Jill was holding in her hand.
It was unusual to see little Jill with a friend; the child was a loner. She didn’t seem to mind it, either, or at least that was the impression he had.
“Mr. Rafferty,” she said when she noticed he was coming in their direction. She closed her hand and held it behind her back.
“Evening,” he said cordially. He peered at the other girl but didn’t recognize her. “Hello?”
“This is my cousin Katy,” Jill said.
Cousin Katy wasn’t nearly as pretty as Jill, but her smile was infectious and he found himself grinning back. “Nice to meet you, Katy. Come for a visit?”
The girl nodded, her ponytail bouncing. “I’m from LA. Hollywood, really.”
“You’re a long way from home,” he said, making conversation. “How do you like our little town so far?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Well, it takes some getting used to, the quiet and all. But you can walk the streets at night and be as safe as if you were in your own bed and tucked in for the night.”
“Why would you want to?” the girl asked.
“What?”
“Why would you want to walk the streets at night? What’s there to see?”
Nonplused, he shook his head. “Uh huh. I’d best be on my way. Say hello to your mother for me.”
When he was a few yards distant he heard them whispering and gave a look over his shoulder.
Their heads were together, and again they were looking at an object of some kind in Jill’s outstretched hand. The light was too dim for him to be sure, but he thought it was nothing more than a lump of clay.
“Kids,” he said. It didn’t take much to amuse them.
The air was so invigorating that he walked far beyond his usual turning back place. It was a shame he hadn’t had time to go over to the hospital and retrieve his cane, but he was doing fine without it.
Darkness had descended, and there was only a sliver of moon, but the road was lighted at intervals, and when walking through the shadows he could always look ahead to a pool of that light.
There were almost no cars out, perhaps one passing every ten minutes or so.
What with the dark and the silence, he could almost believe that he’d gone back in time, that he was twenty years old again, walking to town for a church social.
Of course, the roads hadn’t been paved, just dirt that developed ruts in the spring when the snow thawed and created clouds of dust during the late summer when there’s been no rain.
A car passes you by on a dirt road in August and you had something to show for it; he could still remember the smell of it in his nose, the taste and gritty feel of it in his mouth.
Hell, he used to beat himself silly trying to brush it from his clothes.
Those were the days.
Progress, they said, had made life better for all of them, but to his way of thinking, he’d rather inhale a little dirt from a road that was too pot-holed on which to drive more than fifteen miles an hour, than suck up a lung full of exhaust from hundreds of thousands of cars doing eighty on a twelve-lane freeway.
Well, never mind. It wasn’t his problem.
A few more years and he’d be dust. And when the planet died and the earth was bare, it could be that a whirlwind would uncover his final resting place and lift
him
into the air.
He wouldn’t mind that at all.
It had been a good while since he’d passed the last light and he hadn’t yet come upon another, so he decided that it was time that he turn around and head back.
He was surprised when he turned. He couldn’t see any light at all.
The sidewalk had long since stopped and he’d been walking along the paved shoulder of the road. He crossed the empty road to the other side so if a car approached he’d be facing it.
The only people who drove this far out were teenage couples looking for a place to park, and heaven forbid the guy be copping a feel and thus distracted, weave out of the lane and into Rafferty.
He’d been willing to die in two World Wars, but he’d be damned if he’d sacrifice his life upon the altar of raging hormones.
He walked on, getting tired now, his old stringy muscles threatening to put a hitch in his get-along. But at least he could see a light now, a dim glowing in the distance, maybe a half a mile away.
With something to fix on, he tried to pick up his pace, and his lungs labored from the effort, so that at first he didn’t hear anything but his own breathing.
Until something moved across the road in front of him, and disappeared into the blackness to his left.
Rafferty stopped to listen.
Rustling sounds, the kind an animal makes running through dry brush.
More than one animal, he thought.
The light beckoned him, and after a moment he resumed walking. Whatever animals were out here probably would be more frightened of him than he was of them. Could be a family of possum, except that the glimpse he’d gotten of them seemed bigger.
Like dogs. He stopped a second time.
Rafferty swallowed, his throat feeling ragged from his exertions. For the first time in a long time, he felt fear.
Don’t let them know you’re afraid. They can smell it on you.
He knew he couldn’t continue to just stand there. His best bet was to reach the light; it wouldn’t keep the dogs from attacking if they were going to, but at least he’d be able to see them.
He lowered his head slightly—some animals took eye contact as a direct challenge—and started off again, keeping a measured pace.
Behind him, he heard the telltale click of their claws on the pavement.
There was no hope of out-running them, and he refused to even try. Better to save his energy for fighting them off, if it came to that.
It went on that way, he walking steadily, they following behind. The light grew nearer, until at last he was in its circle.
Rafferty stumbled to the light-pole and wrapped one arm around it to hold himself up.
For a moment he closed his eyes, thankful to have made it, but when he opened them he saw that the animals—indeed dogs of a kind—had surrounded him.
“Get away,” he said and made a shooing motion with one hand. “Scat.”
One of the creatures began to growl deep in its throat, and Rafferty braced himself for what he knew was to come.
The first to attack sunk yellowed teeth in the old man’s upper leg, and Rafferty could only beat feebly at its head as warm blood poured out of the wound and down his thigh. The second caught his right wrist in its mouth and yanked.
He fell to the pavement and heard the crack of bone in his hip.
None of the wounds they’d inflicted yet were mortal, but Rafferty knew he would not survive this, even if the animals tired of the attack. Eighty-odd years of living had made him stubborn and he didn’t want them to have the thrill of the kill, so he did the only thing he could.
He closed his eyes and died.
Thirty-Three
“God!” Cheryl Appleton cried, and sat straight up in bed. Her heart beat so hard she thought it might burst, and she placed one hand on her chest.
“What’s wrong?” a voice asked.
She saw that a nurse was standing in the doorway, and for a moment she was confused—why was there a nurse in her bedroom?—until the dream cleared from her mind and she remembered that she was in the hospital.
The nurse was looking at her peculiarly.
“A dream,” she said. “I had a bad dream.”
“I don’t wonder.” The nurse came into the room, a small silver tray in her hand. Several tiny white paper cups were on the tray, and the nurse selected one which she handed to Cheryl. “Your pain medication.”
Cheryl took it with a sip of warm water from the cup on her bedside table.
“What do you mean,” she asked after swallowing, “you don’t wonder?”
“It happens all the time.” The nurse crumpled the paper cup and tossed it in the trash. “People injured in an accident often dream about the circumstances leading up to the moment they were hurt. And it usually results in a rude awakening.”
“I wasn’t dreaming about myself,” Cheryl said.
“Oh? Then it has to be the moment you get the bill for all this, right?”
“No.” She took another taste of water; the pill had left a bitter taste.
Or maybe it was the dream.
“No? Well, the day of reckoning will come,” the nurse said cheerfully. “Is there anything else you need before I go?”
She shook her head and winced at the pain the movement had elicited in her neck. “Thank you.”
The nurse left and Cheryl eased back down on the bed. Although the pain wasn’t as bad as yesterday, she still hurt all over. As difficult as she found it simply to lie down, she wondered how had she sat up that abruptly without killing herself?
Fright, she supposed. The dream had scared her beyond her pain.
If dreams were based on subconscious thought, what had she been thinking to produce something as wrenching as an old man being savaged by wild dogs?
Maybe it was a side effect of the pain medication. If so, she was sorry she’d taken any.
Even though she’d slept all day, she was beginning to drift off again when someone tapped at the door.
“Miss Appleton? Are you awake?”
I am now,
she thought, and opened her eyes.
The man at the door was attractive enough for her to suddenly be aware of the fact that she hadn’t brushed her hair—or her teeth—since yesterday. A couple of inches shy of six feet, blond hair, brown eyes, and nicely dressed in dark slacks and a patterned ski sweater.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m awake.”
He came into the room and stood near the foot of her bed.
“I’m Doctor Houston—”
“Oh no,” she said, “not another one.”
“Another what?”
She pulled the covers up to her neck, feeling all at once exposed. Vulnerable. And mad. “I don’t have to talk to you. I’m
not
crazy.”
“I never—”
“Tell Mr. Barry ‘nice try,’ but I’m not talking to you or any other psychiatrist. I already told the jerk he sent by earlier to take a hike, and now I’m telling you. I know my rights, and I don’t have to submit to a psychiatric evaluation for Barry or the school board.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist,” he said.
“Psychiatrist, psychologist, what’s the difference? Oh, I know there is a difference—I don’t mean to insult your profession—but I don’t need my head examined. So get out before I call the nurse.”
“Really, Miss Appleton, I’m not a psychologist either. I’m a medical doctor.”
“I have a medical doctor.”
He held up a hand to silence her. “I think you misunderstand. I’m not here to examine you, physically or emotionally. No one’s sent me. I only want to talk to you about Jill Baker.”
The name brought her up short and Cheryl narrowed her eyes. “What about her?”
“That’s what I’m here to ask you. What about Jill Baker?”
She shook her head. “Why do you think I could tell you anything?”
“Because something happened yesterday between you and her. . .”
He’d paused, apparently to give her a chance to complete his thought, but she said nothing. Experience had made her cautious; he would have to convince her that this was more than a plan by Mr. Barry to trick her into saying something for which she’d be sorry.
“I talked to Sarah Lassiter today.”
“So?”
“She told me that you were looking at Jill Baker when you . . . when the accident happened.”
“When I stepped in front of the bus, you mean.”
“Did you, Miss Appleton? Did you knowingly step in front of that bus?”
There was an intensity in his eyes that she found disturbing, but she couldn’t look away. He was asking essentially if she’d tried to kill herself, which he would do if Barry had sent him. On the other hand, if he’d spoken to Sarah about her and Jill, perhaps he knew something about what had happened beyond the mere details contained in the police report.
If that were the case, she wanted to know. Or rather, she
had
to know.
“I did not,” she said finally.
“You were pushed?”
She licked her lips nervously, and glanced at the door which was standing open.
Without a word, he went to the door and closed it.
“I wouldn’t say pushed,” she said cautiously. “There was no sense of force.”
Dr. Houston said nothing, but by his watchful silence she knew that he would not think her crazy for saying what she was going to say.
She took a deep breath. Once it was said, there was no turning back; she’d step into
The Twilight Zone.
“It was more like being
drawn.”
All he did was nod.
“It was as if . . . as if she were a magnet, and I had a metal core?”
“You couldn’t resist?”
“At that moment, I didn’t want to.”
“Even though—”
“Even though I saw the bus out of the corner of my eye and knew it was going to hit me.”
“And all this time you were looking at each other?”
“Yes.” She shivered, remembering the child’s cool gaze. “Up to the moment of. . . impact.”
“What happened then? Do you recall?”
“Not really. To be honest with you, I’m a coward. When I saw that the bus was going to . . . was not going to miss me, I blacked out.”
“I see.”
“I wish I did.”
“Miss Appleton—”
“Call me Cheryl. If you’re not the enemy, we might as well be friends.”
“Cheryl,” he said, and smiled. “I know this may sound odd to you, but I’ve been watching Jill for a long time, and one of the things I know about her is that she usually does these things to kids her own age. In fact, because you’re an adult, I didn’t originally consider you to be a victim. I thought either Sarah was the target and you were somehow swept in, or that it was a genuine accident.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“A number of things. First, the fact that Jill herself fainted at the time of the incident—”
“So that’s why she was here.” At his questioning look, she added: “I saw her in the emergency room. I didn’t know anything had happened to her. I don’t mind telling you, it scared me half to death. I thought . . .”
“That she’d come to finish what she’d started?”
“Yes.” The memory of her own helplessness was still fresh in her mind. “But she didn’t. I don’t know why.”
“I think I do. There’s a limit to her abilities. Doing what she did to you took her to that limit, and she had to recharge.”
Cheryl considered that. “So she knocked herself out for me. Should I be flattered?”
He smiled thinly. “Not really, because her attack on you is evidence that she’s stretching.”
“Getting stronger?”
“Absolutely. I’m not sure how she does what she does—what you describe could have been a form of mind control or simple kinetics—but the fact that all of a sudden she is trying her powers on adults indicates that she’s no longer content with the status quo.”
“Which is?”
“Terrorizing the kids in this town.”
“Oh God.” She thought of Kevin’s arm and grimaced. “But why? Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. Practice, maybe. I’m not sure it matters at this point.”
Cheryl felt sick to her stomach, imagining what kind of mind it would take to consider breaking bones and inflicting pain as “practice.”
“What is she?” she whispered.
“I’ll be damned if I know, and I’ve had seven years to figure it out.”
“Seven
years?
”
“I’m responsible for all of this,” he said, and Cheryl heard an undercurrent of anguish in his voice. “Because I didn’t have the nerve to stop it.”
She could think of nothing to say.
He began to talk, almost in a monotone, and she listened in stunned silence as he described delivering a baby girl on a stormy night. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow as he talked.
None of what he said made sense in the world she lived in, and yet she knew without a shadow of doubt that what he said was true. As horrifying as it was, it had happened.
Was happening still.
“I brought her into this world,” he concluded, “and set her loose.”
“But you didn’t know, you
couldn’t.
Not a newborn baby.”
“I should have. The first couple who adopted her refused to keep her. They wouldn’t talk to me at first, but when I kept showing up on their doorstep, year after year, they finally gave in.”
“What did they say?”
“The woman was alone at home with the baby for the first time, and she was trying to change a diaper when she accidentally stuck Jill. A pinprick, but . . . this black stuff, the same thing I’d seen, came out of Jill’s mouth and nearly suffocated the mother. She was unconscious on the floor when her husband came home.”
“They didn’t tell anyone?”
“They thought no one would believe them. The woman had a history of epilepsy, and they were afraid that if they told the truth the adoption agency would either think she was crazy, or think that she’d fudged on her medication and wasn’t fit to care for a child. They still wanted a baby, but not Jill.”
“You said first couples. Were there others?”
“One other before the Bakers adopted her. Those folks barely kept her a full day. They were on the doorstep waiting for the agency to open to give her back.”
“Did they explain why?”
“The official version is they decided they really wanted to hold out for a little boy.”
“What about unofficially?”
“They were divorced by the time I found them. He told me he had nothing to say, but she was a little more forthcoming. Apparently they had a couple of exotic birds, which had free run of the house. I guess the birds must have startled the baby.”
“She killed them?”
He nodded. “I think the woman witnessed it, but she refused to admit to that. She’s still scared. And childless.”
“I can’t say that I blame her. But how did the Bakers manage for all these years?”
“I’m not sure, except that Georgia seems to be a remarkably good mother. Maybe Jill never felt threatened once she was in their home. Maybe she learned to control her impulses. Regardless, she needed someone to take care of her needs.”
“It’s so awful,” Cheryl said. “Talking about her as if she’s some kind of monster—”
“She’s dangerous, make no mistake about that. She might look like a pretty little girl, but she would have killed you yesterday if she could.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We have to stop her before she gets any stronger. She hasn’t killed anyone yet, but it’s only a matter of time before she does.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “The question is, do
you
realize what I’m saying?”
“I . . . you . . .” The words refused to come.
“We have to destroy her, and soon. If I’m not mistaken, something is
building.
She’s doing things in front of witnesses, which she hasn’t before. The night fogs we’ve been having . . . I checked with the meteorology service and not only are there no reasons for them, they don’t show up on the satellite map.”
“How is that possible?”
“I have no idea. Then there are the dogs. It could be they’ve been attracted by what she’s doing. It’s possible they’re here as scavengers, and they’re waiting for her to play out her hand.”
Cheryl nodded mutely and wrapped her arms around herself, all at once chilled to the bone.
“What I’m getting to is, I’m not sure I can do this alone. Will you help me?”
“How can I? I can’t get out of this bed.”
“You can act as bait,” he said quietly.